Fixing an NES with a Purple Screen, and it's not the Cartridge Slot !!

In this video I take a Garage sale score NES System clean it up and get it running again
It suffers from the Purple screen issue.

[@1980sGamer]

There is a tab on the cartridge elevator that is supposed to go under the board. if it's not under the board, you'll experience exactly what you're describing here where you need to loosen the 2 front screws on the cartridge elevator a bit.

[@TheGameBench]

Came here to leave this exact comment. You shouldn't have to loosen screws to make it work. Def that tab causing the issue.

[@1980sGamer]

@@TheGameBench Oh, for sure. And it's still something that quite a few people don't know about.

[@TechGuyLife]

I had to go and take apart an NES to see what you were talking about and I see the tab now. I had no idea that was there. I will log that in the old memory banks...thanks for the info !

[@1980sGamer]

@@TechGuyLife You're very welcome. :)

[@techboogaloo]

If you wanted to use the old cart slot in the future, you can always try the old boil it in water trick to get the pins back into shape. But man $10 for two NES consoles is an awesome deal! Nice work!

[@TechGuyLife]

Now that I have those 2 old connectors I should try fixing them that way and see if I can bring those back to life for the next NES that I find that need a cartridge connector

[@beefviper]

@@TechGuyLife I don't know if boiling them would actually do that much. I know boiling rubber belts works well, cause the rubber responds to the heat. But I can't image metal pins reacting much. Back when I was a kid, we'd use a pick and bend each metal pin back into place, one by one. That worked well. And today, I'd also probably also spray them with some contact cleaner.

[@joshkelly4682]

​@@beefviperboiling the pin connectors works great I do it with all nes, n64, snes and genesis, some snes and all genesis has soldered pin connectors but not hard to removed and boil then resolder

[@johneygd]

Wow,how just 1 little bit of corrosion could just ruin a whole system,just unbelievible,great fix trough🙏

[@wherecoulditgo4677]

Good catch on that corroded via!

[@moderusprime]

I tend to just refurbish the old 72-pin connectors as "new" ones are made cheaply and probably do more harm to the games and MB than good.

[@TrolleyMC]

that broken trace was probably an address or data line, if one of those goes out you can bet nothing is gonna boot.

[@shadymaint1]

I wish I knew what I know now about NESs back when I was a kid. I would have made a killing fixing and modding them. I even built my own arcade stick controller. Used a old cable box as an enclosure. It even has turbo.

[@RDJ134]

The YT algoritme advised me this video, love it. Subscibed :) My NES had magic smoke after putting it on, still have it in storage and still wondering what happend with it.

[@TechGuyLife]

Thanks for subscribing! Hopefully you can get your NES fixed someday. The NES is almost indestructible. I bet it can be fixed.

[@RDJ134]

@@TechGuyLifeThank you for the reply, and i hope the NES will be fixable and to enjoy it again :)

[@shadymaint1]

Of the four NESs I own one of them has a graphics display problem that I have not been able to fix. System starts right up and displays graphics but it's all jumbled up. Seems like its displaying tiles from the wrong location in memory. I've tried different games and 72 pin connectors. Cleaned everything. Reflowed a bunch of connections. Recapped the board and power supply. Even ran some jumper wires because a couple traces looked iffy. I figure one of the memory chips is faulty. I don't want to steal a memory chip from any of my other systems because they work great. Non working NESs used to be pretty cheap on Ebay but not any more.

[@bobstevenson3130]

Just as an aside, I really hope you didn't throw out the original 72 pin connector. From what I've seen, the quality of aftermarket connectors isn't nearly as good as originals and most of them fail within 5 years, as opposed to 20+ years on original connectors. Also, most original connectors can be fixed by bending the pins manually or boiling them in my experience.

[@TechGuyLife]

Nope I never throw anything away...lol

[@Zarcondeegrissom]

yeah, the older stuff uses longer-lasting coatings that are not RoHS 'complacent'. The funny thing is AT&T did a lot of time-consuming expensive testing to find out why and how to stop their underseas cable repeaters from tarnishing and growing tin whiskers, the fix they found is no longer allowed today because of RoHS laws. I have SATA power connectors that predate 2007 that are still working fine, the newer ones are lucky to last a couple of months, some just fall apart, others tarnish and lose electrical connection. The plastic on the other hand, well, that ages the same, and not much can be done about that.

[@Kawa-oneechan]

Title didn't lie, it technically wasn't the cartridge *slot* that was the problem...

[@enragedgecko]

So my frontloader is not working been looking at videos, so it does not show video and audio, replaced the caps, even another RF box which was a pain to remove, so I did a continuity test on the PPU pin 21 is video out and shows ground on my multimeter it beeps pin 20 is GND and beeps, then I move to pins 14 15 16 and 17 and beeps ground does that mean its a bad PPU?

[@TechGuyLife]

Possibly, but you might want to check other components to see if anything else is shorting to ground. According to the schematic (wiki.console5.com/tw/images/5/54/NES-001-Schematic---CPU%2C-PPU%2C-RAM%2C-CIC.png) 14,15,16,17 and 20 are supposed to be ground, so no issues there. pin 21 should not be tied to ground, that's for sure.

[@enragedgecko]

@@TechGuyLife besides Q1 transistor what would be another component that's connected to the PPU?

[@TechGuyLife]

check all the other pins on the ppu if nothing else is shorted to ground then most likely the short is something attached to the video out and you'd have to look at that on the schematics, there's capacitors and transistors in between pin 21 and the video connections. It might even be a small blob of solder or a broken trace, which can be really hard to find.

[@Zarcondeegrissom]

18:40 was a different time when manufacturers could not sell stuff that interfered with radio, unlike today when the latest generation of cellphones interfere with airplane landing radars and it's up to airlines to solve the issue. combination of the "no one 'important' uses shortwave radio today" mentality, along with cost-cutting just enough to not get sued by anyone with lots of money for selling jamming devices deceptively sold as consumer electronics, assuming anyone in the country that made the stuff can be sued by people in another country it was sold in. We no longer live in a world of "do no wrong to others", we are now in a world of "if it causes you problems, then it's your fault for having inferior stuff" not good enough to not be affected. lol.

[@Mrshoujo]

Time to snip Pin 4 on the 10NES chips!